1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to inventory management, and in particular, to methods, systems and apparatus for providing multiple business scenarios for utilizing excess inventory in a manufacturing environment.
2. Description of Related Art
In today's manufacturing environment, products and technologies are continually and rapidly evolving with an increased rate in engineering changes in design developments. It is these engineering changes that typically lead to excess inventory. Excess inventory, which includes surplus inventory, is problematic for manufacturers since the manufacturer is burdened with such inventory, often leading to increased costs for the manufacturer and substantial losses in both manufacturing time and profits.
Prior art has focused on reducing inventory levels by finding ways to shorten the pipeline and reduce lead times. Attempts at solving the problems associated with excess inventory include developing a build plan for end products that would consume as many of these excess parts as possible. Conventionally, these build plans are generated manually. However, manually generated build plans for end products is undesirable since this approach is labor intensive, requiring investigating individual choices one at a time, and is often impracticable when an excess part could be used in several alternative saleable items, each of which might consume various quantities of other excess parts.
Other known approaches of plan building for utilizing excess inventory include generating end-product plan portfolios based on a predetermined, single business scenario, which is commonly maximization of profit. However, this approach is also undesirable since the manufacturer is only able to provide end-product plan portfolios based on this single business scenario, thereby potentially leaving the manufacturer with remaining excess inventory. Currently, there exists no easy, efficient manner in which a manufacturer can provide a number of optimal end-product plan portfolios based on a variety of different business scenarios for improving the manufacturers capability of exhausting its excess inventory, and thereby reducing any chances of leaving the manufacturer with remaining excess inventory.
Accordingly, a need exists in the art for improved methods, systems and apparatus for identifying excess inventory and providing a variety of end product build plans based on multiple business scenarios for exhausting such excess inventory.